


In My Eyes, You Are Golden

by Erato_Muse



Category: The Eagle of the Ninth - Rosemary Sutcliff, The Eagle | The Eagle of the Ninth (2011), The Eagle | The Eagle of the Ninth - All Media Types
Genre: Esca's past, Feelings, Feelings Realization, Fluff and Angst, Happy Gay Farmers (Eagle of the Ninth), M/M, Marcus and Esca talk about Esca's past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-13 01:47:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29768826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erato_Muse/pseuds/Erato_Muse
Summary: When an encounter with a Brigantes woman in the marketplace who blames Esca's father for their tribe's fall shakes Esca up, he and Marcus talk about his past. Marcus loves and consoles Esca as difficult memories arise.
Relationships: Marcus Flavius Aquila/Esca Mac Cunoval
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18





	In My Eyes, You Are Golden

**Author's Note:**

> My first Eagle of the Ninth fic! I have been a huge fan of this film for over ten years, and recently revisited it and read the novel for the first time this month. I'm glad that there is still a fandom for it, and glad that it is back in my life.

“Mac Cunoval?” the woman asked.  
Marcus’s attention was drawn away from the colorfully dyed woolen blankets that he was perusing at a stall. He had just been about to call Esca over, and as his head turned the glint of the distant, thin, and precious late autumn sunshine in the woman’s fiery auburn hair caught his attention. So did the rhythm of her accent, so like Esca’s, wrapped around the familiar syllables of Esca’s name.  
Esca’s body tensed minutely, his jaw was set, and his demeanor was as defensively proud as when he had drawn his father’s dagger and promised to serve Marcus, the man who had saved his life. Marcus had instantly understood that the Brigantes would keep his promise-he could not doubt the hatred that had enlivened Esca’s eyes. It was a pure, strong, ardent fire, and it brooked no doubt. Perhaps it was the substance that had kept him alive for seven years of enslavement.  
But there was more to Esca than a grudge that vivified his small but wiry and strong frame, kept a cradled flame in his pond blue eyes and animated him with careful grace. When Marcus was ill after having his leg reset, he had learned Esca’s precise and measured, reliable tenderness. He could never forget it, nor look for it from any other source than Esca’s hands. He watched Esca’s throat bob as he took a deep swallow, and watched the muscles of his neck and his face as he seemed to prepare himself for something that could not be avoided.  
“Yes. Esca, Mac Cunoval,” he admitted to the woman, and with his confirmation her blue eyes narrowed with hatred.  
The auburn haired woman spit in his face. Esca closed his eyes, bearing it. The milling servants and slaves, and merchants of the marketplace were drawn to the sight as the Brigantes woman unleashed an abusive flurry of her and Esca’s native Celtic language. A blush rose just beneath her fair skin, and as her harangue continued her fury changed to distraughtness, and tears poured down her face. Just as he knew the moment to string his bow and take aim at a hart or a boar they pursued on a bruise violet moor or in a forest of gnarled, ancient, twisted trees skirted with mist, Esca seemed to know when the woman’s fury faded. He wiped his face of her spittle with the rough woolen sleeve of his long-sleeved tunic, and directed his steady gaze at her with firmness, but compassion. He coaxed her eyes to meet his and not look away, and spoke softly in their language, convincing her of something, it sounded to Marcus's ear, though he knew only the simplest of words in the language of the Brigantes:  
“fish…”  
“fire…”  
“home…”  
“slave…”.  
Of the words he knew, Marcus recognized only the last in Esca’s conversation. The woman spit again, on the ground, and then turned away, her veil of red hair swinging disdainfully in the air like the mantle of a displeased queen as she turned her back to Esca, and walked away.  
Marcus walked up, but hesitated, close enough to feel the warmth of Esca’s shoulders, and to see the minute flexing of the sharp blades of his shoulders as he took deep, labored breaths, trying not to feel something. If he pressed a hand to the space between his shoulders, perhaps he could feel just from the warmth of his body and the rhythm of his breath what he was feeling, what was in his heart.  
He dared to put a hand on his shoulder, and felt heady relief as Esca not only accepted his touch but yielded to it and turned to face him.  
“Let’s go home,” Marcus said tentatively.  
Esca, though his face was tightly composed, nodded.

The rest of their evening on the farm passed as normal. Marcus did not ask who the redheaded Brigantes woman was, and what the origin of her ire was. The sky was heavy and low, crowded with clouds promising rain as they finished some fencing that needed to be replaced. They worked in silent tandem, Esca never hovering, doubting, or doing Marcus’s share of the work for him. Because of Esca’s respect, he not only felt capable but became more so, because he could test his limits for himself, and learn not to cause himself pain. When their sheep and goats were put away in the rickety barn they had purchased with the old farmhouse, fed and watered for the night, Marcus expected them to head into their humble, tumbledown cabin and share a simple meal for dinner. Marcus did all the cooking, and his culinary acumen extended to the fish and boiled eggs they had eaten at Uncle Aquila’s villa. They bought a delicious bread stuffed with olives and rosemary at the market when they picked up other supplies for the farm, but it had been forgotten in their haste to leave the woman and her ill will behind.  
Instead, Esca inclined his head to an overgrown path through an orchard. That path led to a meadow overgrown with golden late autumn wildflowers that cradled a pond. Marcus understood at once, what Esca was saying without words, “Follow me.”  
Marcus followed, without a second thought or a question uttered. They walked silently through the trees, and sat in the tall grass of the meadow. The sky above was gray and furrowed. The water of the pond reflected it in a stormy shade of pewter skimmed dimly with light.  
“She was the wife of one of my father’s 500 spears, and she curses his memory, his name, and his shade. She hopes that he finds no peace in the next world, that he wanders in torment,” Esca said calmly, as if Marcus had asked.  
“She curses him for her slavery?” Marcus asked.  
“He put us all in chains. Because he would not obey our queen, and the peace that she brokered with Rome, because he could not take his losses, accept change, and obey,” Esca said.  
“I have never heard you speak of your father this way,” Marcus said.  
Esca tore a handful of grass up from the ground, realized the futility of it, and then threw the handful of grass with an exasperated sigh. Marcus let that sigh hang between the meadow and the sky, let Esca inhale and exhale, watched as the color rose in his fair face just beneath the down of golden-brown stubble starting to grow on his boyish but solemn face. He felt a small ache in his heart, the ache of wanting to know Esca’s mind, know the language of his pain and speak to it in its own tongue, to banish it like the priests of old Etruria, his home, who read auguries in clouds, who heard the gods’ will in thunder. Marcus had never heard a god’s voice, knew nothing of the future or how to divine it-and he cared to know neither of these things. He only wanted to know how to give Esca peace. He only wanted to coax his steady pond blue gaze back to Marcus’s own eyes, and away from the gray horizon where memories were playing before him.  
“You’ve never heard me properly thank him for my chains? For every beating…for every time my masters saw fit to punish my impertinence, and remind me what was proper for a slave, and due to my master? Surely the spearwife was right, and it was his fault…it was his fault…” his voice became thicker with more and more emotion, and he tore more grass from the meadow, his shoulders become tenser and rounded. He was biting the inside of his cheek, and when he began to rock ever so slightly back and forth, Marcus knew. He knew that he had to dare to touch Esca now, that he had to risk making him feel shamed or broken to let him know that he was not alone. He held him through the pain, held his thin but strong body, feeling the waves gallop through him as he screamed to the gray sky,  
“It was his fault! My father put us in chains! He killed her! He killed her!”  
His mother, Marcus recalled. As was the custom of warrior queens of the Celtic nations, she would not be taken alive by the forces of Rome, Marcus had assumed when Esca first told him of his mother’s death. Now, he knew by the notes of Esca’s scream that this was not true. His queen had been one more thing, like his lands and his pride, that Cunoval of the 500 spears would not surrender.  
Esca’s screams turned from Latin to the tongue of the Brigantes, and then to no language at all. He was warm, he felt feverish, his skin beneath his tribal tattoos was red. Marcus held and caressed him as he had never allowed himself or been allowed before. Marcus felt the tenderest love he had ever been overwhelmed with, as he held Esca through his pain, and in that moment Esca was his as he had never possessed anything or anyone.  
“Esca,” Marcus whispered, when Esca’s fury was spent. “Listen to me. His shame isn’t yours. You had no choice in the matter of your father’s wars against the Romans. I gather that he was the kind of man who left those around him little choice in most matters. And that falls on him. What happened to your people…I was a Roman soldier, but I see now that we had no right to the land of the Brigantes or any other tribe. The Empire is a hungry beast, its appetite to expand is inexhaustible. Rome should have stood down, too. You have no shame in this. You need not be ashamed…you are more than your father’s son.”  
“Not to my people. No Brigantes would welcome me among them. Son of Cunoval, who damned his loyal spears, and all their wives and families to chains. I am cursed in their eyes. That curse will never lift. So long as even one of us lives to tell of Cunoval’s folly, I am cursed by my people,” he said.  
“Not in my eyes,” Marcus said. “In my eyes, you are the most honorable man I will ever know. The only man I truly trust. You’ve stood beside me when I am ill, when I am injured, when I was no one, a broken soldier who would never march again. You did not stay with me because you were a slave. You stayed because you vowed that you would. Your honor has saved my life, has given me a new life. Esca…in my eyes, you are golden.”  
The words stumbled eagerly and ardently out of his mouth, before Marcus could really decide what he meant by them. He instantly knew that he had said too much, when Esca looked at him with a mystified expression. Well, at least he was no longer exhausted from his rage and grief. Marcus knew what that was like…when all the anguish became too much and possessed one in a rage, leaving one exhausted, limp, wrung out, numb, spent of feeling with nothing to replace it. He didn’t want that for his strong, graceful Esca, who was always sure of who he was, even when to all the rest of the world he had been considered a slave.  
“Golden,” Esca said, turning the word over curiously, a light cradled in his eyes like persistent sun shining through gray clouds. He met Marcus’s eyes, and Marcus felt something in his belly leap like a fish. Esca’s gaze pierced him, sometimes. No one had ever looked quite so deeply at Marcus, as if searching for his truth. Esca sighed, and said, “I was the least of my father’s sons. The youngest, the smallest. I was taught the bow, the sword, the chariot and the spear, the same as my brothers, but it was in my father’s mind that I should be an envoy.”  
“You were meant to be a diplomat?” Marcus said.  
“This surprises you?” Esca said bemusedly.  
“You are such a warrior,” Marcus said.  
He could tell that this gratified him. Even when Esca’s mouth did not smile, the rest of him did, and Marcus could somehow see it like the track of dawn over the meadows, the warmth of his gratitude traveling along Esca’s arms, his chest, his belly, his legs.  
“I went to battle, by my father’s and brothers’ sides, that last time, yes…but I was taught to read, to speak your Latin, and it was my father’s plan for me to be a diplomat, to serve the queen, to treat with Rome on behalf of our people, when I was fully a man. For all that, he listened to nothing I said, nothing I advised…he scoffed at me, he yelled at me as he would a dog, told me that I was a boy, a fool, that he would not yield to women and Romans…our queen turned her back on him. Our spearmen were alone, she would send no aid in his fight against the Romans. I begged him to listen, and he struck me…my mother advised me not to press the issue any further. She told me to be strong,” Esca said.  
He looked almost unblinkingly into Marcus’s eyes, and said, “I loved him. But he put me in chains. He chained my mouth, he made me silent. He put my mind in chains…I warred with myself and all I had been taught of reason wanting him to be right, wanting him to win. He taught me to be a man, but he destroyed all I loved. He…my mother…he…”  
Marcus caressed Esca’s shoulders.  
“Your shoulders are so tense. And your back. To make your mind relive these nightmares gives your body pain,” Marcus said.  
“I can see it all before me, as if it is all happening again,” Esca said.  
“Breathe. Breathe, and tell yourself that you are here, not there,” Marcus said.  
Esca took deep breaths of the cold autumn air, and Marcus held him as he did, trying to tell him through his stillness, his silence, and his touch that he would sit beside him and hold him as long as he needed him.  
“I am here,” Esca whispered, looking deep into Marcus’s eyes.  
“His curse is not your curse. His shame is not your shame. You did all that you could, to do what you were trained to do, and make peace to keep your people out of war," Marcus said. Just as Marcus had done all he could to hold the fort when he was injured. He treasured their sameness. They'd both given everything, lost what they had fought for, and survived, to heal hard and build a new, unfamiliar life. Marcus wanted to touch Esca's face, and hands, and hair. He marvelled at all he had never known about him before.  
“Pity that you were not one of my father’s spears. A man like you, he would have listened to,” Esca said.  
“A Roman? This I doubt,” Marcus said.  
“No. Someone like you are, Marcus. In your heart,” he said solemnly.  
Marcus thought back to his own conflicts with his stepfather, and he thought he understood. Esca, the youngest, the cleverest, and the smallest of Cunoval’s sons had never had his full respect. The boy saw disaster where the chief’s pride blinded him, he advised unwarrantedly, and his words, which were mere truth, spoke doom to the prideful chief. Even before their world was lost, Esca believed that he had lost his father’s love, and he had always known that their natures were different. His hatred of Rome, which had burned so strong when Marcus first met him, was a complicated chimera made of hatred and yearning for his father, too. He still wished for the man’s understanding despite the blood that had been spilt. He wished that all that was lost could have been preserved.  
“If you were one of my father’s spears…I would have loved you then as I love you now, Marcus,” Esca said meaningfully, in the manner of making a confession he had been storing his courage for. Courage always seemed to come to him effortlessly, and he gave his all even to odds against him. The meaning of his words was not lost on Marcus. .  
Marcus had heard that this was the way of the Celtic tribes, that their warriors loved each other without shame, like Achilles and Patroculs, or Hercules and Iolus. The idea of this filled him with wild hope and warmth, and fantasies that he had spent much of his life, all of his manhood, trying to ignore. Then he had stopped trying.  
As he looked into Esca’s eyes, however, he saw a tremulous hint of uncertainty.  
“I would have welcomed your love,” Marcus assured him.  
“Would you? I was generally considered a runty, annoying little know-it-all who could not throw a spear straight,” Esca said.  
He laughed, as did Marcus.  
“You are a better spearman now, than then, I think, from what I have seen when we hunt,” Marcus said tenderly. “But I would welcome your love anyway.” He found it sweet, that Esca was still dogged by this spectre of the boy he had been. That boy was not preserved all in bitterness, he still had hope, as well.  
“If there had been a man like you among my father’s spears…” Esca whispered with yearning, and it pierced Marcus's heart, and warmed his face.  
Marcus understood. He had often thought about difficult parts of his life, like when he lived under his stepfather’s rule, or when he joined his first legion and it came to be known that he was the son of the man who lost the Eagle of the Ninth legion, and wished that Esca had been there. He wished for his life to be rewritten, for Esca to have been there always.  
There was more, beneath his words than that…Marcus knew that he was speaking of the sort of love there could have been between them if Marcus had been a warrior of his tribe…he could hear a hint of the boy he was, who did not know if he would be accepted, who thought he was too small, too learned, not as strong as his brothers…  
Of course Marcus would have loved Cunoval’s wise, mouthy son, who strove to be both warrior and scholar, who spoke truth to power to his father, but fought beside him in the end, unable to betray his own loyal heart. Wise, brave, Esca with a conflicted heart that Marcus wanted to hold in his hands. He would have loved him then, as he loved him now, in the meadow where they watched the sky swell to rain.  
“We’re together now,” Marcus reminded him, and kissed the top of Esca’s sandy brown hair. He wanted to give him so much more. The sky could not even be the measure of the love he wanted to give him. It would take the rest of their lives, and Marcus took comfort in this, looking forward to it, as he treasured the weight and warmth of Esca in his arms. Esca's whole body sighed with acceptance of Marcus's love.


End file.
